


Arm Yourself Because No One Else Here Will Save You

by oxymoronassoc



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-22 09:25:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronassoc/pseuds/oxymoronassoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Casino Royale and QoS from M's POV-ish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arm Yourself Because No One Else Here Will Save You

It’s not that she doesn’t know; rather she knows too well.

But then again…it’s her job to know.

Perhaps sometimes, though, she sees too much and becomes blind to it. That’s when she makes the mistake she could have lived to regret.

Not that she makes mistakes or has regrets; it’d be unprofessional.

 

In another place, another time, another MI-6, there might be whispers that he’s her pet agent, that she makes allowances for him she gives no other, that she goes to bat for him too often.

But that’s not now and no one thinks it much less dares to say the words.

Even if it _is_ true. 

 

She meant to teach him a lesson, but it went a little too well. He’d always been a surprisingly apt pupil. She blames herself, but only a little. She knew how the odds were stacked from the start. She knows how he is him. 

But somehow she failed to account for something she does know but didn’t know he did.

There’s no gentle let-down to love. 

 

It had been meant as a reminder: no one here will save you but you, not even from yourself. It’s sink or swim.

But he deals too much in absolutes. And now he’s gone, drowned inside himself with a dead woman in a red dress. 

She’s not sure he’s going to resurface.

 

Of course he says he’s fine, that it’s a matter of duty, of principle, of whatever that clever mind has twisted this farce into. And they’re too far gone to pull him out now, and she accepts the lie because they need him.

But when he goes rogue and the odds are stacked against him, and even she can’t cover up the mess he’s left in his wake, well:

She pulls him in herself. 

 

It’s meant to be an embittered speech, one that shames him. Not that she doesn’t believe what she says—she does, every word of it. As much as she brought the start of this down upon him, well, he’s dug his own grave by now. And there’s a dead girl in the next room that says maybe he didn’t take the lesson to heart as well she might have thought. 

But this is more than just her call and he goes passively, almost docilely, accepting his crime. It’s a shame, to see him broken like this, crippled by what he labels as “duty” but what she knows by its true name. 

Yet, to say she’s surprised to see him coming towards her down the hall moments later would be a lie. 

She took the stairs alone for a reason. 

 

Trust is implicit and all-encompassing and in the end, he gets his revenge.

But when he steps out into the flurry of Russian snow, he looks anything but satisfied. His face is solemn and shuttered and for a moment, she thinks he’s gone back on his word, that the agent is dead, but no—he is him. Its just that he’s discovered that bitter truth: there is little satisfaction in this kind of vengeance. 

“Congratulations, you were right,” he says and his voice holds no bitterness, just a statement of fact that becomes something akin to chagrin. He doesn’t like to be wrong any more than she does, but he doesn’t see that he was truly right all along and it isn’t the place or time for her to point it out. He'll discover it himself, in time. At least she hopes he will.

“Bond,” she says, “I need you back.” It’s half warning, half welcoming.

“I never left,” he tells her before he walks away into the night. The necklace falls from his fingers into the snow and gleams there long after his footsteps have faded.

She walks forward, picks up the icy chain, and looks at it where it shines in her palm. She pockets it after a moment’s contemplation and a shake of her head.

“No,” she says quietly to herself, “You hadn’t yet arrived.”


End file.
